These days, Prayag Mishra can’t leave his house without getting noticed. “My life has changed drastically in the last month,” says the Toronto 25-year-old who worked in tech sales until recently. “I can’t really walk into anywhere without having someone recognize me.”

A few weeks ago, Mishra was just another twentysomething posting TikToks from the front seat of his car. But after a video he made on September 23 went viral, he was propelled into a “surreal” new existence as the self-proclaimed “big pookie of pookie nation.”

This happened organically when people in his 92-per-cent-female audience, mostly Gen Z, began calling him “Pookie,” a term of endearment, in his comments. “All of this started from the ‘It’s the way you act’ video,” says Mishra, referring to 10 seconds of himself saying to camera, “I’m always going to like your Story, even if we stop talking. The problem was never how you look. It’s the way you act.” Something in that video struck a nerve to the tune of 5.3 million likes and counting. In a matter of weeks, his following, which he’d been chipping away at for two years, grew from 29,000 to 4.3 million.

“I have a connection with the audience,” says Mishra, whose handle is @444pray. “I ask them, ‘How was work? How’s everything?’ It’s a relationship I’ve built, and it’s nice to see them responding back. I never talk to ‘the people’; I believe in speaking to individuals at a large scale. It feels more intimate for me too. I feel a bit less lonely in the car.” 

@444praySay it again Pookie♬ original sound – Prayag

That’s the appeal of what Prayag does: playful, flirty banter, delivered straight into the camera as if he’s Facetiming only you, his “pookie.” He’s often silly, but can be sweet and sentimental.

He’s also frequently described as “sassy,” an Internet word that began as a derogatory, homophobia-tinged way to describe exuberant straight men like Mishra, who calls himself “hyper-expressive.”

In summer 2022, the “Sassy Man Apocalypse,” a phrase coined on Twitter, became a tongue-in-cheek viral TikTok trend where women posted videos of their sassy boyfriends, complaining that they don’t feel constrained by traditional masculine expectations to be stoic or tough.

Mishra has become a prominent face of the reclaimed Sassy Man movement online, which stands in stark contrast to the “manosphere,” comprising influencers like Andrew Tate who promote misogyny disguised as manliness.

“These Alpha males and these serious guys have dominated the internet for such a long period of time that it’s just incredibly refreshing for people to see someone who just wants to flirt with them, have a snack with them, sit with them,” Mishra says. “Especially in an era of so much argument and conflict between genders, it’s so important to embrace one another, and just enjoy each other’s company.”

When asked if he thinks he’s typical of the younger generation of men, Mishra says, “I’ve definitely surrounded myself in an echo chamber of sass. I can’t be around someone who only goes to the gym and listens to bad music. Life is too beautiful for that.”

Sassy is a label Mishra is proud to wear, partly because it’s taken him time to fully inhabit this “authentic” expression of himself. “As a people pleaser who always agreed with others and never really put myself first, I became a very watered-down version of myself, especially through schooling and working in the tech space for four years,” says Mishra. “I was lying to myself about who I wanted to be, the things I wanted to say or do.”

About a year ago, he found himself unable to bear the tension between his two vastly different personas: A corporate drone at work, who couldn’t be loud and “vibrant” or wear the clothes he wanted to wear, and the quirky, mischievous person his friends and family knew.

“I would go to work every day and think, this is terrible. Everybody here hates their job,” he says. “It’s people pretending they have a ‘Big Boy or Big Girl Job.’ Everything about that grossed me out.” When he got laid off last year, it felt like a release.

“I said, ‘Hey man, you’re going to have to face yourself now. This is who you are. You either step into it or suffer 24/7. And I chose to be radically authentic. It has been an incredibly healing journey to finally be a fish in water, instead of out of water.”

Around the same time, Mishra embarked on a “self-dating” journey to explore what he really wants in life. “Am I giving myself full commitment? Am I cheating myself?” he asked himself. “It’s a commitment to yourself. It’s never abandoning your inner child once you meet someone new. It’s honouring every aspect of who you are.”

It’s been great, he says, but also lonely, hence the making videos while he’s eating or drinking coffee alone in his car. “I thought, why don’t I build a relationship with someone who’s going to love me and value me back? And the universe sent me the Pookie Bears,” he says.

@444prayRomantic era has begun♬ original sound – Prayag

This growing community has been healing for him, allowing him to work through feelings of unworthiness and romantic yearnings. “I’ve had it all—casual relationships, long-term relationships—but there’s a chord that’s not being struck,” he says. “I want to sit and talk to someone for hours and hours, and for it not just to be about the universe, but about mustard vs. ketchup, the idiosyncrasies of what it means to be a person in their twenties in 2023.”

Mishra, who was raised on Bollywood’s big gestures, believes that “everything is leading to universal love.” He’s also inspired by Romeo—as in the guy who wooed Juliet—and his pursuit of love against all odds. “There’s a beauty in yearning for love in the face of rejection and not knowing if the other person will like you back,” he says. “I often say in my videos, ‘Pookie, when we first met, I didn’t know if you’d like me at all.’”

Mishra says divisive content that questions whether men and women can be friends or rates people on a scale are “primitive, childish, we should have left that in grade school.” His channel is for people who believe we’re better off together.

“I don’t think society teaches us how to love,” he says. “Conversations about romance have been about conquest and conquering one another, making sure you get the most from the other gender while giving the least.” He believes men should be taught that “in order to love a woman, you’re going to have to give up the woman you have in your mind. This is a real human being, and you’re going to have to accept her and love her as she is.”

Mishra chalks up this enlightened approach to his sister’s influence; they give each other relationship advice. “it’s been incredibly important to have a woman educate me on dating, because she’s been able to offer a perspective none of my guy friends are able to.”

For the meantime, being millions of people’s Pookie is enough. “I’m just so excited to talk to them five or six times a day.”